Online shopping has become popular these days because of its ease of use and fast processing. Users can browse millions of products available on the Internet, and find out the most granular-level details about the product before buying it.
To add to the enriching experience of users buying products at the click of the mouse, various service providers such as banks, merchants, memberships, and other organizations regularly introduce various attractive offers to lure the users to shop online. For example, a merchant, such as Macys®, may offer a 10% discount on a particular type of shoes. Similarly, a particular bank, such as Bank of America®, may offer 10% cash back on a purchase from Macys using the Bank of America payment card. Yet another example of a promotion may be 4 membership rewards points for every dollar spent at Macys by American Express® card members. Additionally, the users/customers are often provided promotion codes that can be used in their subsequent purchases.
Although technology and other promotional schemes have popularized online shopping considerably, the users are not able to completely benefit from the schemes and offers available online. Card associations, issuers, and banks send via email, statements, and paper bill inserts numerous promotional codes to their customers offering cash back or discounts on purchases of products and services such as car rentals, air tickets, movie tickets, and flowers. They may also present these offers on their websites as an online shopping mall. Similarly many corporations induce loyalty to make similar promotional offers from variety of retailers via loyalty programs. The customers are benefited only if they remember receiving such promotional offers, visit the ‘members only online shopping mall’ website to take advantage of the offers and/or if the promotional codes are readily available with them at the time of making payments. However, often customers don't remember these offers and/of promotion codes and ‘members only online shopping mall’ when they are looking to buy something or when they are actually paying for a purchase at a merchant site.
Thus, in light of the discussion above, there is need for a method and system for assisting users to take an informed decision with right promotional information while shopping online. The method and system should assist the users at right moment during various stages of online shopping based on context; thereby helping them shop wisely on the Internet. The method and system should further automatically present the offers to a user that is personalized to his/her interest or membership status thereby enabling the users to get maximum benefit of the promotions/offers.